A month ago we went on a family holiday on a deserted island in the Indian ocean with a very tiny, quiet resort on it with huts overlooking the ocean. It was very quiet, and my family spent their time sailing and snorkeling. While I love swimming, I didn't feel ready to try my luck with an ocean. So, twice a day I went to the hut with a treadmill and started to do a gentle interval training. It was painful, but I enjoyed it. The rest of the day I would read and live-tweet some of my chapter summaries of books. Only at dinner would I notice any symptoms of covid with the minor buzz of other guests in the background and dinner conversation exhausting me. I would fall asleep early not bothered by the heat, and sleep long restful hours.
I was reminded of a book, The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction, by my graduate school dog-park buddy (and basketball competitor), Matthew Crawford (whose Shopcraft as Soulcraft was a genuine bestseller and briefly a cultural icon), in which he points out that in our age the very rich pay for quiet (as can be noticed in their airport lounges). Most of the few other guests at the resort were very bourgeois Suisse couples (bankers, insurance, etc.), sporty and pleased with the lack of noise while they enjoyed the ocean (and presumably each other). It was truly restful, and it was also delightful to be around my spouse and son while both were mellow.
When I returned from the holiday, I went back to lap-swimming in the pool down the hill. And I quietly started to muse that if it weren't for my fatigue after social interactions I had turned the corner on covid. (For my official "covid diaries," see here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; and here). Two weeks ago I went to Amsterdam for a MRI and a visit to my occupational therapist. The occupational therapist insisted that I try to to discipline myself and avoid social interactions for more than 25-30 minutes (including with my family). Of course, I had to experiment occasionally with longer interactions, but I should really try (now using her words) not to deplete energy. She recognized that returning to teaching in February would mean I would violate her instructions, but since I claimed I 'gain energy' from my undergraduates, and these were fairly unidirectional lecture courses (I promised her to make few jokes and leave less room for questions from the lecture hall), she resigned herself to it.
Now I know many academics really dislike social interactions, and I am myself known to be irritable, impatient, and unpleasant on occasion. And there is no doubt that I can be incredibly happy writing hours on end. But in general I love the social aspect of doing philosophy together, and hanging in cafe's and talking. And I love spending time with the undergraduates discussing the material and learning from their insights. And I love gossip. And after a few years of pandemic I really just want to watch crowds enjoying life.
I was musing about this when I arrived early at my MRI. Much to my amazement I was allowed to go thirty minutes ahead of schedule. After the MRI I had a minor panic attack that the nurse who administered it never asked me for my name (just my weight) and whether my wedding band was made of pure gold. I haven't heard the results yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if my results were mixed up with those of the lovely old man who was scanned after me.
The brain scan was pure horror. I have done them before, and I have never been too bothered by the claustrophobic set-up or the noise. (I had a MRI done of my lungs when I was first diagnosed with covid.) The claustrophobia still didn't bother me--I just closed my eyes. But even with ear-plugs and noise-canceling headphones, a brain scan is the way to kill off all the long haulers. Imagine your head exploding, and then adding TNT, while listening to Rammstein. It only lasted thirty minutes or so. But the variety and intensity of the noise stayed with me for a whole week. I was bedridden, insomniac, and with a weird nausea/headache. And while I am much better this week (more about that below), the optimism of a few weeks ago eliminated. The bitter irony is that I had arm-twisted my neurologist to put me in the scan. (I am back to swimming my laps daily.)
On Monday I had an important telephone meeting with an occupational health agency expert. According to the law, after one year this expert evaluates my dossier in light of a formal report of my occupational physician, documentation sent by me, and an employer's report. While I have another year on disability funded by my employer, this is the first moment a process that can lead to termination or a new career can be initiated. So, it's not just a routine conversation. I don't think I reveal any state secrets when I disclose that my Chair had not submitted her report. This told me that my department wasn't yet at the point where they would use my partial disability to get rid of my position and salary.
As an aside, but not irrelevant, luckily, the evals of my Fall course were stellar: students felt they had to work hard and were challenged, but they adored the course. (I did say I love my undergraduates, and it is returned.)* The only sign in the evals that my students noticed anything of my covid is that one complained that my jokes were real downers (usually people praise my jokes).
The conversation with the occupational expert got off on the wrong foot when I misunderstood her intention in her trying to get me to understand that based on my CV I was probably overstretched before I got covid. I thought she was insinuating that my covid was mostly a burn-out. My reaction was not wholly surprising because too many Dutch medical types have tried to push this line on me this past year. And I reminded her that while everyone in Dutch academy was overworked (because of structural lack of funding), I was in no mood for another physician trying to convince me that my situation would just heal itself if I took a step back. But we quickly clarified that what she was trying to say was that I should not expect to return to my former level of activity in my job. I assured her that there was no risk of that. I don't expect to get any research done while teaching, and for the moment I am withdrawing from all speaking engagements.
The rest of the meeting was anticlimactic. She said she trusted my occupational physician that I was likely to have a full recovery. And that as long as my department and I stayed within the guidelines of the occupational physician we should aim to keep me in my position. We would re-evaluate in four months. Later that day I received a lovely email from the Chair of my department that echoed these sentiments.
As I turned to preparing my syllabus for my enormous required, survey course -- 637 registered students -- I initiated a whirlwind of emails to settle logistics. Leaving aside pandemic uncertainty and the fact that we still have to do online testing, courses this size really and this prominent in the curriculum involve half a dozen stake-holders who all have their vision on what it should be. As the emails went back and forth, I mentally realized and accepted I would not get much scholarship done. It would be a prep week.
Two nights ago I awoke in the middle of the night from a complex nightmare. As I laid in bed restless, I wondered whether my irritability over the burn-out trope was perhaps blinding me to the truth; maybe I couldn't handle the workflow at work? But as my mind drifted into anxiety and I reflected more on the dream, I was terrified over my future: what if each class lecture would incapacitate me for two days (like my Fall seminars)? What if I really could never have a real, long conversation with my kid again? What if I could never attend a workshop again? What if my wife becomes miserable because she has lost her partner in crime? And so on, and so on.
I mentioned in some of posts at the end of last year that I understand myself as partially cognitively disabled. This limits my life, but it also puts enormous strains on others. My immediate colleagues have had to pick up some of the slack, and my family's life-style is hugely impacted. A lot of the changes can be folded into 'the pandemic', but some of the adjustments pertaining to me qua individual may well be structural for me, and my environment. If my class does incapacitate me I will have to think about a career switch. Not because my department will nudge me out, but because i shouldn't be in a job that makes be bedridden out of sight. And that is terrifying.
As regular readers know I have been influenced by (recall here; here; and here) Elizabeth Barnes' The Minority Body. And one lesson I took from it is that being alive just is living with constraints. The real political and psychological problem is that when you are disabled or impaired, our social environment is shaped for different bodies and agents. The adjustment to the absence of once familiar affordances which have become out of reach is painful and tiring. Yesterday, Matt Strohl called my attention to a beautiful essay by Francey Russell in The Boston Review. In it, she quotes Sidney Poitier that “acting isn’t a game of ‘pretend.’ It’s an exercise in being real.” This made me see that each new role would be exhausting for actors. For me, being cognitively impaired is taking on a new role, and, if you allow me the inference, so an exercise in being real.
*Full disclosure, due to a bureaucratic mix-up my evals and those of Uğur Aytaç were mixed up, but his evals were also clearly stellar.
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